Thank you. Some good food for thought. 🤔

Thank you, makes total sense.

A hormone blocker like Arimidex/anastrozole or something else?

Can you try the medicine first? You may have no big side effects (I don't with anastrozole), and in that case it's just taking one more tiny pill with your vitamins. Of course, it can affect bone density long term, but they do check for that.

The advantage to trying the medicine first (if it's a hormone blocker) is that you will likely know fairly quickly if you will have side effects and what they are - it lowers the estradiol estrogen 70% in the first 24 hours.

Radiation side effects are more cumulative, so you won't know as quickly. They can take longer to go away, particularly the fatigue. I'm also lazy, and would not want to have to drive to treatment every day 😄(I work from home)

If my doctor told me my chances were equal with either treatment, I'd try the medicine first. Maybe you can ask him to review side effects again, with a view toward how long they might last? And ask him if it's easier to switch from medicine to radiation, or radiation to medicine?

I did 25 rounds (5 weeks) of rads and HR (been on HR's since late 2019) - no issues with either.

I had radiation daily for 6 weeks in 1998 after a lumpectomy for DCIS. It was followed by Arimidex for 5 yrs. The only problem I had with radiation didn't show up until 2021. I had a masectomy for a tumor that was small enough that only sentnal nodes needed to be removed for testing to see if it spread. The radiation had damaged the sentnal nodes so they couldn't absorb the dye to identify them to the surgeon. As a result the surgeon had to remove lymph nodes for testing. This led to lymphodema. Sentnal node removal does not. Small price to pay as far as I"m concerned.